Downie, secretly, was not ill-pleased by this diversion, in which Richard forgot the subject of the paper.
The doctor soon came—a village practitioner—fussy and full of importance; but nevertheless skilful; and he decided that disease of the heart—a malady under which, though ignorant of its existence, the deceased had long laboured—had proved the immediate cause of death. The poor shrivelled remains of the proud old lord were conveyed to the principal bed-room of the mansion, and there laid in a species of state, upon a four-posted bed, that rose from a daïs, and was all draped with black. His coronet and Order of the Bath, together with that of St. Anne, which he received when ambassador in Russia, were deposited at his feet upon a crimson velvet cushion, that was tasseled with gold; while two tall footmen in complete livery with long canes draped with crape, mounted guard beside the coffin day and night, to their own great disgust and annoyance, till the time of the funeral, of which Richard took the entire charge; and which, in a spirit of affection and good taste, he resolved should be in all respects exactly what the deceased peer would have wished it to be.
The features of the latter became, for a time, young and beautiful in their manliness and perfect regularity, while all the lines engraven there by Time were smoothed out, if not completely effaced.
"How like our father, as I can remember him, he looks!" whispered Downie, more softened than usual, by the hallowing presence of death.
But Richard was thinking of another face whom the dead man resembled—a young and beloved face to him.
"Denzil did you say?" he stammered.
"I said our father," replied Downie, sharply.
"True, he died young," was the confused reply.
"Your mind wanders, surely?" said Downie, with a dark and inexplicable expression in his now averted face; but Richard saw it not, he was simply taking a farewell glance of one who had loved him so well; his manly heart was soft, and his dark-blue eyes were full with the tears of honest affection and gratitude.
So Audley Lord Lamorna was dead, and all now turned to Richard as their new and future master; all the blinds in Rhoscadzhel were drawn down by order of Mrs. Duntreath, and all went about on tiptoe or spoke in subdued voices, especially Downie, who in his heart thought that Richard was spending "far too much in ostrich feathers, crimson coffins, and other mummery," among undertakers, and heraldic painters, too; but he was more politic than to say so—even to his wife, who, with her daughter Gartha, a pretty girl in her teens, had been on a visit to General Trecarrel, and now duly arrived to act as mistress of the mansion, pro tem., during the solemnities of which it was to be the scene.